


You can check out any time you like

by Anuna



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Messed up feelings, Skye pov, Unreliable Narrator, but at the same time he's all she thinks about, but i don't do tragic endings, eventual resolution to this hot mess, explicit content, manipulative skye, messed up relationship, not exactly a healthy relationship dynamics, post 2x 10, she wants to cut him out of her system, skye is too focused on her ward - anger, there's that, this isn't fluff, ward had enough of her shit, ye who enter here have been warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3448724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/pseuds/Anuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It's the Enigma code of her mornings and evenings and empty hours she spends in a shooting range while one single face haunts her inner vision.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Or, how Skye can't exorcise Ward out of her system.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	You can check out any time you like

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by [Lily1986's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lily1986/pseuds/Lily1986) meta post and the discussion about Skye's single minded focus on Ward during 2A (because I don't like using the term "obsession" and because it gets thrown around so lightly). I feel there are lot of works that did this with Ward, while at the same time I've seen Skye's focus on him very rarely, if ever discussed through fic (correct me if I'm wrong though). Thus here is my attempt at looking at what exactly drives her anger and why is she unable to let it go. 
> 
> The title comes from "Hotel California" by The Eagles - a suiting song (I highly recommend listening, especially the version from "Hell freezes over" concert), since it talks about addiction, and this fic is attempting to look at the current, not exactly healthy aspects of Skye and Ward. 
> 
> All (polite) comments will be appreciated! I expect to get this done as a three - parter fic, keep an eye on an update in a couple of days. :)

__  
Mirrors on the ceiling,  
The pink champagne on ice  
And she said "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device" 

The Eagles, _Hotel California_

*

*

*

*

 

She gets up early in the morning, and she gets up before the birds, before the sun, before the chilly mist has left the ground. Each morning is like the other, where she stretches her muscles, greets her sores, brushes her fingertips against the pale scar on her abdomen. She showers barely long enough to feel the water welcome her into wakefulness – she spends her life awake now, aware and open eyed and in constant watchfulness. Shower is not an indulgence. It's a necessity, so she's practical and quick. 

After she gets dressed, she brews coffee, twice stronger than she ever used to. 

At five am the monitors flicker to life and she sits in front of them like a researcher of rare species. If she watches long enough she might decipher the secret behind the pattern. 

There is a pattern. She can see that there is a pattern, the Enigma code of her mornings and evenings and empty hours she spends in a shooting range while one single face haunts her inner vision.

The light in the vault is low. It flickers on when Ward starts moving around his cell, and serves dual purpose. Whatever he's doing can be seen, and whenever he's doing something, it _can_ be seen. 

It's always at five am precisely. It's always three steps to the left, before he takes off the wide sleeveless shirt and neatly folds it, leaving it in the corner of the bed. 

Then it's seven steps to the center of the room and the same set of exercises, and Skye's mind tries to flex along with his muscles, wrap itself around his movements, push until the limit, until she finds the answer. She looks for it in the straight line of his back and taut stomach muscles and the way he makes exactly five steps back to his corner and his shirt. 

And each morning the same, like a perfectly written computer code. No glitches. No irregularity she could grasp at. 

In the shooting range she imagines his face, and instead of the boxing bag his body, and at those rare occasions when she's sent down to talk to him (she doesn't need to _be sent_ ) she tries, hard, to find an access point. 

(There seems to be just one, and even if it makes her feel nauseous she sinks her teeth into it – she is his weakness, and he will do anything for her. Believe everything she says, do anything she asks, be stupid enough to turn his back until she can shoot him. Four neat shots, and this time it's a warm body instead of paper sheets with painted targets.

It doesn't matter that she doesn't have an answer. She tells herself sometimes they're not necessary.)

She is content to let it end. 

Only it doesn't. 

* 

After the underground temple and the earthquake all pattern is gone. Skye finds herself trying to write a new code, to reprogram herself, but it's like her own coding is unbreakable and incomprehensible to her, just like it was to Simmons. 

(She wishes she could let Simmons figure it out. She tried. The way Simmons watched her, like she might uncover a secret beneath the pattern, was too familiar.

Skye knows what comes after this particular faliure and doesn't wait for the other shoe to drop.) 

She tries to find Cal. After running into Raina – what used to be Raina – Skye tries one thing that's always been reliable. One person she _can_ locate. 

She sends out a distress call, one about danger and needing help, because he always wants to help, always wants to be a good little soldier and prove it to her. And as expected he comes. 

Only, he doesn't come alone. 

The woman with him still has a scar covering a better part of her face, but despite it she still looks too much like May, and Skye can't afford looking at May's face or thinking about May (or Coulson, or the team, or what she might have done to them. She can't think of her lack of control, she can only think about one thing, _focus Skye_ says Ward's voice in her head and she curses him. But she needs him. And it's Ward who's taught her what to do when she needs something done.) 

Her eyes settle on Ward, prettily as she knows, the patent pleading look that convinced him to spill his little soul to her. It will be of use again, so she looks, all innocent and pleading and asks him to help. 

“I need to find Cal,” she says. 

He blinks. 

“I don't see you bleeding,” he says flatly. “So why do you need him?”

It's not her question that gives her a pause – because she wouldn't tell him the true reason anyway – it's the way he says it. Like he's untouchable. Like she's out of strings to pull.

And then before she can come up with an answer - _focus, Skye_ \- he starts speaking. 

“Why do you need Cal?” All of the sudden she's not so sure of herself. Not her plans, or intentions or her goals – herself. And for the first time _ever_ he's done this to her – he never made her feel like something in her is _faltering_. She squashes the thought and hardens her thoughts. “Heck, why do you need me, Skye?” he asks in a tone she's never really heard from him. “Didn't I teach you not to call enemies for help?”

That feels like a slap. She has a dreadful feeling of deja vu, of the Vault and the energy barrier, but suddenly she's standing on the wrong side. The woman with the scarred face is aiming a gun at her, but the gun itself isn't what's giving Skye discomfort. 

“Enemies,” she repeats. “Strange act for an enemy, then, to respond to a distress call.” 

Ward turns serious at that. 

“I don't see distress,” he says, shrugging like he doesn't care. 

*

In more or less words he told her to go fuck herself. That wasn't exactly Skye's intention, but that was what she had ended up doing anyway. 

It's not that she's given up. It's a small stall in her plan. Okay, it's not. It's the fact that she doesn't know what to do – for all her training, planning, skills and goals, she doesn't know what to do with _this_ , so it's like running away to find her own fate again. And she is doing the same thing, except she added SHIELD as another ghost to haunt her. 

She's not running, she tells herself. She's searching. She just can't afford to stay put. 

And it's not running when you're looking after yourself, right?

There, at some point of her new old existence she felt that particular itch. She's done this before, fucking in motels and back alleys because brief human contact was better than none, and now, better distraction than any other she's found. Her mind was better off orgasming than causing ground to shatter, even when guys she screwed could barely get her off. 

Besides they'd all stop as soon as the ground started shaking, and it always started shaking when she was feeling the good part was coming up.

Talk about frustration.

Then she runs into Raina. Whom she doesn't trust and doesn't want around, but the thing is, Raina can do something Skye can not. And Raina can still make her feel like everything she knows and believes in is upside down. (It's the things he says, things she tries not to think about. _They will never see you as an equal, Skye. You will never be of the same value, there will always be someone looking for ways you're different. And dangerous._ ).

Well, one thing she does get out of her brief time around Raina is that she _can_ control the nasty destructive waves around her, when she puts her mind to it, and that's all she really wants. 

Once she's learned, she catches the first flight. Her next station is SHIELD. She never _wanted_ to go away in the first place. 

* 

Next time she runs into Ward, she's running away from Raina and everyone who thinks they have any claim on her. She just needs a little more practice. It's like hacking. Like learning the right kind of code, or how to breathe and what to think to make the tremors appear or go away, and she doesn't want or need _any_ of them. 

So first time Ward shows up again, she hasn't had a whole conversation in weeks, and she hasn't had sex in months, and the fact that he's currently inspecting a gash on her forehead (seriously, no big deal) isn't helping. 

“You don't care,” she says through gritted teeth. 

“You'll live,” he says nonchalantly. Figures. He's seen enough wounds in his life.

The alcohol stings, and he doesn't seem to particularly bother if it does. Skye doesn’t either; the pain nicely numbs out the smell of gunpowder and sweat and him. He's wearing one of those long sleeved shirts she always wanted to take off of him, and even as she's telling herself not to do this, not to think this, she's staring at the long line of his neck, of his fucking gorgeous neck, while he's still patching her up. 

 

And just like that she's fucking wet and tight and sore between her legs. 

There has always been synchronicity between them, a balance that allowed her to push at his buttons and allowed him to motivate her and make her believe that there are important things, things worth fighting for, things worth believing in. Was it the same wavelength, or intellect compatibility or just pure and raw sexual tension, she never truly got to know. She just knows that kissing him was amazing and that she was cheated out of more. 

She knows that she didn't have a decent fuck in months, no actually, ever since she saw Miles. And that was an eternity ago.

Planning ahead has never been her natural trait – in fact using tactics was something Ward had trained into her, and her current plan is short term. When he's done cleaning up her gash she rises in her seat and kisses him without pretense or holding back. It's a kind of kiss that's straightforward and clear about her intentions, saying that she wants him, and wants him between her legs. He freezes up at first but that doesn't matter. She's not looking for love or a lazy moment in bed the morning after. She's looking for a fuck, and she wanted to fuck him for ages now. 

There's tension in his large muscles even when his tongue slides into her mouth. She ignores everything but the fact that he's plunging his tongue in her mouth. He hesitantly takes her hips in his hands and she grabs the front of his pants, finding him already hard. 

She feels triumphant as he kisses down her neck and she hastily opens up her shirt. Her bra is in the way, and she reaches for the back clasp – the moment it gives he shoves it away and makes room for his mouth. He's rough and he's biting her and shoving his hand into her pants, and she's just so wet right now, and he needs to fuck her already.

He pushes her against a wall and she smirks. He attacks her mouth and every inch of her skin and she feels victory filling her veins. She can _still_ do this to him, she can render him to a moaning incoherent mess of a person who's unzipping his pants and shoving hers down her legs. 

(She's still his weakness.)

He turns her around unceremoniously, her face against the wall, and pulls at her hips. There's no tender foreplay, no kisses along her neck when he pushes his dick into her and she screams. Then he fucks her, hard and fast and almost brutal, but that's exactly what she wants – her palms against the rough wall, her voice strained from screaming, his teeth leaving burning marks along her shoulders and her neck. 

Then, suddenly he goes rigid behind her back, gripping her sides hard enough to bruise she can feel disappointment with every grunt and moan he makes into her ear. He pulls out of her and she's not able to stop a moan of displeasure, but before she can turn around he pushes fingers into her and against her. 

It's a contrast to what he did before, instead of brutal fuck from moments ago he's moving in and out and rubbing her where she needs it the most, and she's reduced to cursing and pleading and saying broken things like _fuck_ and _more_ and trying not to call out his name. 

Then she comes, in a blinding spasm of light. The ground beneath them shakes and the wall under her hands might be cracking, but Ward doesn't seem to care. His fingers remain inside her as long as she's coming all over his hand. 

“There's your fuck,” he says then and removes himself from her completely. 

And she might feel cold, but all the bites he left her with burn. Once she's back with SHIELD she inspects them all in the mirror, carefully, marveling how her skin still bruises.


End file.
